Arena di Verona: A Roman Amphitheatre in Italy
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- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Italian, Roman, Venetian
- Site type
- Entertainment
- Remains
- Amphitheatre
On this page9 sections
History
The Arena di Verona is a Roman amphitheatre in Verona, Italy, built during the early Roman imperial period, probably in the late Augustan or early Tiberian age and possibly completed around AD 30. Its exact inauguration date is unknown because no written record survives. Archaeological and stylistic evidence places its construction no later than the first century, before the Colosseum. The building probably formed part of Verona’s Julio-Claudian monumentalization, alongside work around the forum and the renovation of the city gates.
The amphitheatre resembles the Augustan amphitheatre at Pula in its style, building methods, geographical setting, and cultural context. These similarities have led to the possibility that both buildings were designed by the same architect and constructed by the same workforce. By AD 69, during the civil war between Vitellius and Vespasian, the Arena stood outside Verona’s Republican walls. Vespasian used Verona as a stronghold and ordered a rampart and the Adigetto moat south of the city, partly because the amphitheatre had made the earlier defenses inadequate.
Roman defenses and spectacles
In AD 265, the emperor Gallienus rebuilt sections of Verona’s late Republican fortifications and created a new curtain wall about 550 meters long. The wall incorporated the Arena and stood roughly five meters from the amphitheatre. It intersected some of the building’s rainwater channels, reducing the efficiency of its drainage and contributing to the later decline of the structure.
The Arena was designed for public spectacles. A letter by Pliny the Younger records that a friend offered Verona a venatio, a Roman animal-hunting spectacle, as a funeral tribute to his wife. Funerary inscriptions from Verona commemorate gladiators connected with combat in the amphitheatre. Aedonius, a secutor, fought eight times at Verona before he was defeated and killed at the age of twenty-six. Generosus, a retiarius from the gladiatorial school of Alexandria, fought twenty-seven times without defeat and died naturally. Pardon, identified as Dertonensis, died during his eleventh contest.
An inscription honoring Glaucus records a vow to Nemesis, a deity associated with retribution and the balancing of fortune, for the gladiator’s safety. The weapons shown in the inscription suggest that Glaucus was probably a retiarius, a fighter whose equipment included a net and trident. His supporters helped pay for his tomb, indicating that he was a well-regarded fighter. Another inscription has been interpreted as evidence for a gladiatorial barracks, although it may instead refer to an enclosed open-air area used for young people’s physical and recreational activities. A classical-period barracks therefore remains possible rather than certain.
The amphitheatre may also have been used for Christian martyrdom, but this interpretation is unconfirmed. Scipione Maffei proposed that Firmus and Rusticus were martyred there in AD 304. The rise of Christianity, the end of gladiatorial games, and inadequate public maintenance contributed to the Arena’s abandonment as an ancient spectacle building.
Late Roman and medieval transformations
During the Romano-Germanic rule of Theodoric the Great, the Arena probably received maintenance and continued to host spectacles. Medieval chronicles later attributed its construction to Theodoric, a tradition that probably arose from his repairs and use of the building. The most serious damage associated with his reign was the demolition of much of the outer ring for defensive walls. Its stone was reused, and about twelve meters of height were removed, including the upper gallery. Lower seating and the cavea, the amphitheatre’s seating area, remained usable.
In AD 312, during the war between Constantine and Maxentius, the Arena served as a bastion for Verona’s defenders because it stood higher than the Gallienus walls. A sortie by the besieged and a night battle took place in front of it before Constantine defeated Maxentius. The siege is described in a panegyric to Constantine and represented on the Arch of Constantine. One relief probably shows the section of wall enclosing the Arena.
The building was later damaged by the Adige flood of 589, the earthquake of 1116, and the catastrophic earthquake of January 3, 1117. During the reign of Berengar, Hungarian invasions led to stronger defenses and the use of the Arena as a stronghold. The mid-tenth-century Raterian Iconography depicts the outer ring as intact and describes the building as a labyrinth of dark galleries.
Parts of the cavea were quarried for stone, especially after Verona’s destructive fire of 1172. Municipal statutes issued in 1228 made an early attempt to halt this damage. During the communal and Scaliger periods, judicial combats took place inside the amphitheatre. Professional champions fought for litigants in uncertain trials, and the victor determined the legal outcome. Dante witnessed at least one such event.
In 1278, nearly 200 Cathar heretics captured at Sirmione by Mastino I della Scala were burned inside the Arena on the orders of his brother, Alberto I della Scala. Statutes issued under Alberto in 1276 allowed prostitutes to live in the outer arcades. A revision of 1310 ordered the Arena closed and imposed penalties for damaging its entrances or relieving oneself inside it. The inhabited arcades remained distinct from the enclosed cavea until the nineteenth century.
In 1337, after Verona incurred debts during a war against an anti-Veronese league, the municipality, with the consent of Mastino II della Scala, assigned the Arena’s rental income to the University of Citizens, a consortium of municipal creditors. The municipality did not fully redeem the building until 1586. In 1382, twenty-five days of jousts and spectacles were held there for the wedding of Antonio della Scala and Samaritana da Polenta.
Protection, study, and restoration
A Venetian statute of 1450 described the Arena as a memorable building that brought honor to Verona. It required the structure to remain closed and imposed penalties for damage or the removal of stone. Renaissance scholars and artists, including Giovanni Maria Falconetto, Fra Giovanni da Verona, Giovanni Caroto, Sebastiano Serlio, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Baldassarre Peruzzi, and Andrea Palladio, studied the amphitheatre and considered ways to preserve it.
After partial redemption of the municipal mortgage, prostitutes were expelled from the arcades in 1537, which were then leased to artisans and merchants. Verona became the first city to organize systematic protection and restoration of an ancient monument. Work approved on May 24, 1568, concentrated on the cavea but was interrupted by plague in 1575. Further interventions took place from 1651 to 1682 and in 1694 and 1699.
Archaeological investigation began in 1710 under Ottavio Alecchi, who discovered the central well and an elliptical channel. Scipione Maffei’s study of 1728 promoted a more scientific approach and criticized earlier excavations that had altered the cavea. He examined the seating divisions, upper loggia, podium, underground conduits, and central well, interpreting the well as part of the rainwater drainage system rather than as a support for a velarium, the awning used to shade spectators.
Between September 1728 and July 1729, workers removed a layer of earth about 120 centimeters deep from the arena floor. The Ala, the surviving wing of the outer facade, was restored and consolidated between 1731 and 1735. Excavation, surveying, modeling, and the repositioning of seating began again in 1761. Work stopped for lack of funds in 1772, resumed in 1780, and stopped again three years later.
The first documented joust took place on February 26, 1590. A major Giostra della Quintana followed on May 29, 1622, with knights from Verona and abroad, including Sweden. Another notable joust occurred on May 4, 1654, and the last was held on November 20, 1716. Theatrical and dance companies increasingly replaced equestrian spectacles. Maffei’s Merope was performed in July 1713, and Carlo Goldoni attended a performance in July 1733.
Eighteenth-century events included bull hunts, in which bulls or oxen fought dogs trained by butchers, and the exhibition of a rhinoceros in January 1751. Goethe visited the Arena in September 1786 and regarded it as the first major ancient monument he had seen.
Nineteenth and twentieth-century conservation
Under French rule, Napoleon Bonaparte visited the Arena on June 15, 1805, and watched a bull hunt. The government then funded restoration planned by Luigi Trezza. The amphitheatre was also used as a detention camp for Austrian prisoners, who dismantled a theatrical stage for firewood. Napoleon watched another bull hunt there in November 1807.
A Deputation for Public Ornament, established in 1807, took part in the Arena’s conservation and became the Commission for Ornament in 1816. Excavations in 1817 traced a drainage channel along the major axis toward Palazzo Ridolfi and again exposed the Gallienus walls. In 1820, the municipality evicted residents from the building, assigning forty-two arcades for storage and removing thirty-six tenants, some from families that had occupied the structure for generations. A later program focused on demolishing nearby houses, exposing the buried base, lowering the level of Piazza Bra, and improving the monument’s surroundings.
Antonio Pompei directed major nineteenth-century studies and restoration work. In essays published between 1872 and 1877, he sought to reconstruct the amphitheatre’s original appearance and supervised restoration of the third level of access passages. Uncertainty about the original design prevented a complete reconstruction of the cavea.
During the Second World War, temporary buttresses protected the Ala from bombing. They were removed after the war, and the Ala’s five vertical pillars were reinforced between 1953 and 1956 with Riccardo Morandi’s post-tensioning system, using steel cables and pressurized liquid cement. Between 1954 and 1960, non-original structures in the arcades were removed, wooden gates were replaced with iron gates, stairways and arcade floors were restored, underground channels and the central well were cleaned, and the outer ring was repaired. Cracks between seating steps were sealed, the central pit received a new slab in 1960, and an iron railing was added along the uppermost step.
The Arena has hosted the Verona opera festival continuously since 1913 except during wartime interruptions, when Aida inaugurated the modern festival tradition. It became a major open-air opera venue while continuing to host popular spectacles. Historical films have also used it for staged gladiatorial combats, wild animals, and Christian persecutions. The building has served for cultural and civic events, including the 1866 celebration of Veneto’s annexation to the Kingdom of Italy, the 1970 final of Games Without Borders, and the 2026 closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics and opening ceremony of the Winter Paralympics. Preparations for the 2026 ceremonies included safety and accessibility improvements.
A steel comet installation placed in Piazza Bra from 1984 caused irreversible damage to several seating steps when part of it fell during dismantling in January 2023. From Christmas 2024, only its head was installed, with light beams replacing the traditional tail.
Remains
The Arena is an elliptical amphitheatre measuring approximately 152.43 by 123.23 meters, with a height of about 31 meters. Its arena measures 75.68 by 44.43 meters, equivalent to 250 by 150 Roman feet, and has a major-to-minor-axis ratio of 5:3. The cavea is about 39.40 meters wide. The building originally stood on a slight artificial elevation but is now below the normal street level. Its foundations rest on a broad plate of Roman concrete, and the difference in height between the outermost ring and the base of the podium is 1.60 meters.
The plan was probably established by tracing the ellipse of the arena and then drawing a concentric outer perimeter. The ellipse was generated from four circles based on a 25-foot module, including a larger curve with a radius of seven such units. Three concentric structural rings originally enclosed the building. The outer ring is now almost entirely lost, while the surviving Ala consists of four arches and forms the only standing section of the outer facade.
Facade and entrances
The outer facade had three superimposed tiers of arches representing two galleries and an upper portico, a roofed architectural space supported by columns or brackets. The tiers were approximately 7.10, 6.30, and 4.50 meters high. The pillars of the first tier measured about 2.30 meters wide and 2.15 meters deep and carried Tuscan pilasters and capitals. The third tier lacked pilasters and ended in an entablature with a frieze and an additional cornice.
Carefully squared blocks of red ammonitic limestone from Valpolicella formed the facade. Pink and white varieties produced a broad two-color effect. The blocks were fitted without mortar, and their visible faces were left rough to create a rusticated surface. The facade contained seventy-two numbered arches and entrances. Numbers LXIV through LXVII survive on the Ala, while other numbered blocks are scattered around the amphitheatre. The sequence probably began with entrance I at the west and continued counterclockwise.
Inside the upper facade, brackets supported the beams of the portico rather than a velarium. The facade connected with the underlying structure chiefly through shared foundations and the barrel vaults of the third gallery and the gallery above it. The western entrance, toward Porta Borsari and the Via Postumia, was the most monumental. Its central vault is twice as high as the others and reaches beneath the cavea. Symmetrical rooms and straight corridors in the western sector led mainly to the lower seating, while irregular corridors in the eastern sector directed most spectators toward the upper seating. The western entrance probably received the procession that inaugurated the games.
Galleries, drainage, and seating
Three concentric galleries divided the interior into four seating zones. From the arena outward, the first gallery is about three meters wide and 3.60 meters high. The second is about 3.30 meters wide and 9.10 meters high, positioned 11.18 meters beyond the first. The third is about 4.30 meters wide and 8.15 meters high, positioned 14.45 meters beyond the second. A further gallery of the outer gallery’s dimensions supported the upper portico.
Annular corridors called praecinctiones separated the seating levels. The structure had sixty-four vomitoria, access passages leading into the seating, whose arrangement became more complex toward the upper levels. Renaissance restoration removed some original separating corridors, making the exact position of the stairways difficult to reconstruct, although all sixty-four access passages remain present.
Three ring-shaped sewers ran beneath the floors of the concentric galleries, while two additional channels followed the major and minor axes toward the Adige. One axial channel has been explored for about 100 meters. The channels are approximately two meters high and use pebble masonry bonded with mortar, alternating with three horizontal courses of brick and covered by large stone slabs. A subterranean chamber beneath the arena measures approximately 8.77 by 36.16 meters, but its function remains unknown. The central well and the elliptical channel found in the eighteenth century formed part of the drainage infrastructure.
The internal walls use mixed masonry of brick and pebbles, with alternating courses of large pebbles and three rows of dark red bricks about eight centimeters thick. Mortar joints measure approximately one to two centimeters. Most of the structure consists of Roman concrete poured into wooden formwork, and impressions from the boards remain visible on the concrete vaults.
The seating tiers have been repeatedly repaired because of wear, medieval stone quarrying, and later restoration. Renaissance work altered the original arrangement of the cavea, while later interventions restored steps, ramps, arcades, walkways, drainage channels, and the central well. An original seating step bears the position inscription “I / LOCUS IIII, LINEA I,” identifying wedge one, step four, seat one.
Objects and capacity
Statues recovered during excavations are preserved in the Archaeological Museum at the Roman Theatre in Verona. A complete inscription found near the amphitheatre records a wealthy woman’s bequest, made in her son’s name, for a statue of Diana, a venatio in the Arena, and salientes, possibly water conduits or fountains. Nearby fragments include one bearing “CON” and another apparently ending in “ET DEDIT.”
A mosaic discovered in a house just outside Verona’s ancient walls dates from the Flavian period to the early second century. It depicts gladiators, dolphins, geometric patterns, and plant motifs. Its decorative character makes a specific connection with games held in the Arena unlikely, although it includes gladiator names and scenes of combat, surrender, victory, and reprieve, including the defeated gladiator Caecro.
The Arena can accommodate approximately 22,000 people for modern summer performances because the stage occupies about one-third of the seating and the upper portico has disappeared. Its Roman capacity was probably about 30,000 spectators.
